Getting script feedback from TV networks can sometimes be punishing according to writer Kris Mrksa (White House Farm, Requiem, Underbelly, The Slap, No Escape).
Speaking at Future Vision last week, Mrksa observed that feedback often differed between Australian, British & American networks.
“I don’t want to disrespect or offend anyone, but the network feedback we used to get on Underbelly was really brutal. I’d often walk in there and be told ‘This is a piece of shit.’ And I mean, we’ve got the biggest rating show in this country by a mile and yet that didn’t didn’t mean a thing.
“The other thing we’d get very often would be I’d write what I thought was a lovely little character scene in a pub where two guys are plotting or talking about their difficult relationship. The note I’d get wouldn’t be anything about the character’s motivation or the content of the scene. It would be, ‘Could we put it in a strip club?’ That was the sort of level of it.”
Mrksa wrote 8 Underbelly episodes, 4 on S2 Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities, 4 on Underbelly: The Golden Mile plus the telemovie Underbelly Files: The Man Who Got Away.
Working in the UK on productions such as Requiem and White House Farm, he was shocked at how markedly different feedback was from British networks.
“There was just this willingness to intellectualise the process and talk storytelling and the whole thing as an art form, and something that was potentially really saying something important. That’s what they wanted to get to,” he continued.
“I’m not suggesting I’ve never had that here, of course. On The Slap the level of conversation I’d be having with Tony Ayres was very much at that level. But it wasn’t the typical thing. It was a mile away from ‘Can we have a big-breasted stripper grooving around in the background?’”
He also reflected on some experience with US networks.
“(I have) relatively limited experience in the States but I found once you get to a serious level, where you’re not just casually pitching, but where you’re actually talking to someone who’s investing money in the project, that’s where I got astonishing detailed consideration. Like, someone coming into a meeting who sort of knew my script better than I did. That was a shock and it’s fabulous at one level, because the thing that always annoys me the most is when someone’s giving notes and I’m thinking, ‘I don’t think you’ve read the script carefully.’
“I spent four weeks agonizing over every line and you’re daring to give me notes when you haven’t even read it?”
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